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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1945 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

We perceive that that is the appropriate approach now, although we are always willing to strike an agreement, as I made clear to the teachers last week, outside the arbitration commission, and we still hope that we can.

We have discussed the whole issue of the teachers dispute at length in this particular debate. I think the first part of the motion is the concerning part, Mr Speaker. I would be very surprised if Mr Moore in particular could bring himself to support that part of the motion.

Mr Moore: I have no problem at all about it. I support it very strongly.

MRS CARNELL: The reason I thought he would have trouble with it is that I think it was Mr Moore who put on the table and had passed an amendment to our anti-discrimination law which suggested that it was illegal to discriminate on the basis of union membership or, for that matter, non-union membership.

Mr Moore: That has nothing to do with this.

MRS CARNELL: I will show why it has something to do with it. What we have is a situation where teachers, in particular, are basically being told that they cannot do what they want to do. If some teachers want to look after choirs, conduct sporting events or whatever, they are being told that they cannot. But worse than that, Mr Speaker, they are not just being told that they cannot. I was pretty disturbed to see in the latest ACT Teacher, "Stopwork Bans Breached", an article which said:

April 26 Stopwork Meeting directed the Senior Officers of the Union to write to any members found breaching the bans and where such breaches were confirmed, to publish the names of such members.

Whilst several letters have been written, confirmation of an actual breach of the bans has only been received in relation to one member ...

This member, from Narrabundah College, whose name was published there, has committed the absolutely insidious crime of running an out-of-hours film night at the college. What a dreadful human being this poor person is! He had his name published there. Personally, I think that is discrimination. Personally, I think that is an unacceptable approach for any group to take. Publishing somebody's name simply because they happen to be a union member and choose to have an out-of-hours film night at the college is a horrible deal. I think that is a dreadful thing to do. Maybe others here do not. I think it is shocking to take somebody to task simply because they do the right thing by the students. Obviously, others do not believe that. If there are teachers who are happy to work with volunteers and sporting people to take their students to sporting events on interstate trips, I do not really think that this Assembly should pass a motion suggesting that that is inappropriate. I think it would be very inappropriate if we, as a government - - - (Extension of time granted)

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